


Yellow dress, the sun is shining

by starrelia



Series: Colours [3]
Category: Borderlands
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bisexual Male Character, Cisgender, Implied Murder, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-01
Updated: 2016-07-01
Packaged: 2018-07-19 11:22:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7359271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starrelia/pseuds/starrelia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yellow is a coward’s colour, and Timothy watches as Jack surrounds himself in it and finds it horribly fitting. Until, maybe, he actually thinks about it a little more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Yellow dress, the sun is shining

Everything in Helios is an abnormally bright yellow. It’s something that Timothy can’t get used to – maybe because it’s his sister’s favourite colour, too. Or, was his sister’s favourite; he doesn’t exist anymore – and he can’t really wrap his head around it.

Jack surrounds himself in the colour—walks with his old sweater still on, tattered and patched up over the years, and Timothy thinks that that represents Jack far too well.

Tattered, patched up over the years, with ugly marks that show its age and a fading dye that Jack keeps fixing without ruin the entire thing. It’s a sort of cling that Timothy wants to say he can understand… but he can’t. Never has and never will, is what he assumes, because Jack won’t tell him what he clings to.

He can ask [and he has], but he doesn’t think it’ll work [because it didn’t the first time] and so he leaves Jack at it. He lets Jack surround himself in yellow, because it’s such a cowardly colour in the end and Timothy thinks his lover’ll never be brave.

[After all, how can someone who refuses to even acknowledge the way he looks at Timothy, with big eyes and glowing adoration, ever be considered brave?]

* * *

Timothy takes to fixing Jack’s sweater up. When he doesn’t have anything to do and the entire world is sitting on Jack’s back, demanding he  _work and work and work_ with three days of no sleep and two days of no eating, he thinks it’s the least he can do for Jack to give him some breath.

He’s shirtless on the sofa right now and there are several small, flat tablets around – the new clipboards, files, Timothy thinks, that are trying to look futuristic and sleek and no longer use paper. You can still _write_ on them and they feel like paper, but they aren’t really that. He thinks he prefers the old clipboards and sheets of paper, but he doesn’t deny how much easier things are.

Timothy’s sewed a lot of things together before—his baby sister’s ruined clothes, his younger sister’s teddies, his own clothes when they got small tears—so Jack’s sweater has nothing to be scared of, though it’s ridiculous to even think a sweater can be scared.

But Jack loves this old thing; he washes it every day himself, careful and meticulous, while he throws his other layers into the laundry basket to _clean later_ because they aren’t as important as his _only_ sweater.

It’s a clearly old thing; everyone else would have thrown their company clothes away when it got old and gotten better ones, ones that actually look nice and pretty. Heck, it’s not like Hyperion has some sort of uniform that everyone needs to wear.

Yet, he remembers Jack insisting to wear it before he became CEO and he still wears it now, hidden under everything else and Timothy remembers when, once upon a time, Jack used to have the confidence to wear nice clothes and show off; wear one layer instead of a hundred, and Timothy remembers the actual confidence on Jack.

But now, he walks with exaggerated steps and loud claims, constant yells, with a confidence he thinks is as real as his stable memory.

 

 

And Jack can’t remember who Angel is sometimes.

* * *

Yellow is a coward’s colour. Timothy wonders how many people are making that joke right now.  _Hyperion is full of cowards! Like their colour. Who the hell even likes a yellow that bright?_

‘ _A lot of people_ ,’ Timothy thinks as he finds those bastards on different planets and blows their brains up against the wall but his opinions don’t really matter. Not to the dead, anyway. He doesn’t even _like_ killing people, doesn’t like the weight of the gun in his hands, or the guns sitting and waiting in his digistruct device.

He supposes that Jack has rubbed off on him, a bit. Unpleasantly so, but it’s still a part of Jack that’s part of Timothy now and he doesn’t… mind so much. Or well, he minds a lot but it’s still Jack, and Timothy has gotten used to killing by now.

Even if the people he killed right now aren’t really his targets, it still puts him at more ease to have people stop calling Hyperion a place full of cowards.

[The only real coward there is the CEO, who refuses to acknowledge Timothy when he gives him gifts out of the blue, or when Jack pulls him into an embrace where he sighs and curls and then pretends never happened.]

* * *

“You know,” Timothy says while he’s sitting on Jack’s work chair with said aforementioned man sitting on his bed, facing away from him. “I never expected Tassiter to let you make Helios’s interiors yellow when he was still CEO.”

Jack shrugs and Timothy admires his back for a little bit. “He didn’t, but I made it _yellow_ because it’s a great damn colour. Also, I… expected him to use the controls to change it back to red. Well, bastard’s dead now and I have his beard in my office.”

At that, Timothy freezes and stares at the back of Jack’s head, and the man doesn’t turn to face him. “You have his _beard_ in your office?”

“Yeah! Yeah. Like—on a mannequin’s head.” Jack makes some vague gestures that Timothy can’t really see, because he still hasn’t turned around to look at him, so he can only stare at the back of his head and want to just ask _why._ “I kept it there as an example of why you should _never_ betray me! It’s on a trophy stand, babe, don’t worry about it.”

“That’s still _really creepy_ , Jack.” Timothy says and gets a snort from Jack in response. “C’mon, you can’t think that’s not creepy? It makes you seem really creepy.”

“Scares the sheeple.”

“And scares me! Okay, it grosses me out, but what the hell, Jack?”

He stares as Jack, a silence hanging over them both and Timothy doesn’t know if Jack has zoned out or not. It happens—happens often, after the whole Sentinel thing, so Timothy doesn’t push it when Jack doesn’t say anything after a minute or so of waiting.

Maybe he’s just thinking of a good comeback?

He turns to look back at the paperwork on Jack’s desk when he hears the distinct hum and buzz of a digistruct device. When he looks over his shoulder he catches sight of Jack putting his chin clasp on the bedside table and his eyes widen when Jack actually turns to look at him.

The scar’s an ugly thing. Jack’s staring at him with his one good eye while the other one… is pure white.

“Come to bed?” Jack asks, and his voice is unbearably soft. This isn’t the Handsome Jack that Timothy has come to know, and not the programmer Jack either. He doesn’t know which Jack this is, but he’s staring at Timothy with something heavy in those eyes.

Of course, he gets off of the chair and heads over to Jack and nearly flinches when he’s grabbed and yanked down, hugged tight and held, and Timothy returns the hug as tightly as he can. “I’m—not gonna remember this.” Jack suddenly says. “I’m—not at all. Okay? I’m not gonna remember this.” Jack’s voice is shaking.

“I do… I do—with you, I do—with…” the words are tumbling out of Jack’s mouth and he’s trembling in Timothy’s arms. He hushes him and lays him down under the blanket, gets Jack out of his uncomfortable clothes and Timothy does the same for himself before he crawls under the blanket to join Jack.

He turns to face Jack, cups the back of his head, and gives him a kiss on his nose. “It’s okay.” Timothy says, a quiet apology in his voice. “Just go to sleep. You’ll remember what you’ll remember.”

 

And what Jack remembers is mostly the future, dipped in gold.

Yellow is a good colour, especially when Timothy remembers that Jack isn’t okay after the sentinel.


End file.
